The advent of mobile devices and their enhanced capabilities has precipitated efforts to tap the vast information and services available on the Internet and extend them to wireless mobile devices such as wireless telephones and personal digital assistants (PDAs). These devices are easy to carry, provide ample level of battery life for remote operations, and contain sophisticated operating systems to serve as adequate platforms for mobile messaging and information services.
As understood herein, messaging encompasses the ability to send text and/or multimedia content such as photos, audio and video. Further, “services” can include information on demand such as stock quotes, weather, headline news, etc., preferably provided over a Wide Area Network (WAN) such as the Internet.
As recognized herein, a challenge is in building a service that makes market sense for mobile devices. For instance, the capabilities of the target mobile device dictates the strength of the services that can be delivered to that device. This in turn implicates the need for a client application that is sufficiently capable to exploit the resources that are present on the client device.
Furthermore, as recognized herein a server application should be provided that is capable of handling messages not only to a specific device but also to the granularity of a specific user. Also, information services can be dependent on the ability of the device is receiving and displaying the content, posing yet another challenge in providing them to wireless computing devices.